Beirut, Lebanon – Israeli forces killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in combat in a surprise shootout in Rafah on Wednesday.
The news raised hopes among Western commentators that the assassination could be an opening toward ending the ongoing war in Gaza or even the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
However, analysts told Tel Aviv Tribune, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would seek other pretexts to keep his country at war for personal gain and to promote Israel’s expansionist dream of expelling the Palestinians and maintaining an indefinite occupation of their land. lands.
Netanyahu’s fears
Netanyahu has long feared losing power due to the possibility of spending several years behind bars.
In 2019, he was charged in three separate cases: fraud, corruption and breach of trust. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison.
According to the accusations, Netanyahu offered favors and gifts to media moguls in exchange for positive press.
A year later, Netanyahu was elected prime minister for a fifth term. His far-right parliamentary coalition quickly proposed laws that would undermine the country’s justice system by allowing the government to appoint judges, limit oversight of the court and even ignore it.
Meanwhile, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan has requested an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for the atrocities they oversaw in Gaza.
“(Netanyahu) will look for another pretext, or another person, to continually pursue. This will only lead to more insecurity, and that is what he wants,” said Diana Buttu, an analyst on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“He wants to make Israelis believe that they are in a state of siege or war… This is his way of controlling them and staying in power,” she told Tel Aviv Tribune.
That Netanyahu appears to be continuing the escalation became evident on Saturday after a Hezbollah drone reportedly attacked his home in Caesarea.
However, Netanyahu said the attack was carried out by “agents of Iran,” a deviation that some analysts say sets the stage for further widening the war to include Iran, well beyond the Gaza Strip and the Lebanese group.
“Locked in permanent conflict”
In October last year, Israel launched its war on Gaza, killing more than 42,000 people and uprooting almost the entire population of 2.3 million. And the death of Sinwar – Israel’s “enemy number one” – is unlikely to stop it.
“I do not believe that Sinwar’s death changes Israel’s calculations regarding Netanyahu’s desire to carry out the destruction and depopulation of the Gaza Strip,” said Omar Rahman, visiting researcher on Israel-Palestine. for the Middle East Council on World Affairs. reservoir in Doha.
Israel’s war against Gaza’s civilians began in ostensible response to an attack by Hamas on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which 1,139 people were killed in Israel and around 250 were captured.
Gaza was already suffering since the siege imposed by Israel in 2007, with living standards deteriorating to the point that international observers and world leaders quickly began calling it “the world’s largest open-air prison.”
Israel had just ended its physical occupation of Gaza in 2005 – by withdrawing its military presence and evacuating the illegal settlements in which Israeli settlers had established themselves. But this decision had little to do with granting territory and ultimately statehood to the Palestinians.
Ariel Sharon, then Israeli Prime Minister, simply believed that Israeli settlers in Gaza were surrounded by far too many Palestinians, making them a burden on the security establishment. He preferred to withdraw from Gaza and concentrate on expanding settlements in the West Bank.
This was not exceptional as Israel has historically obstructed political solutions that would result in a fully sovereign Palestinian state, Yezid Sayigh, an expert on Israel-Palestine and the Middle East at the think tank, told Tel Aviv Tribune Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.
“Israel has already assassinated many Palestinian leaders and will continue to do so. Nothing has ever changed because, fundamentally, successive Israeli governments – even under Labor, not just Likud – have not wanted to cede territory or cede real Palestinian sovereignty,” he said. declared.
“The result: (Israel) has locked itself into a permanent conflict and has continued all the while to prefer military responses because it puts itself in a position where there are no political solutions,” he said. he added.
Netanyahu appears to be continuing this trend.
On Friday, he said Israel must continue its war against Gaza to “save the remaining Israeli prisoners” and against Lebanon, against which Israel has opened another front in an ostensible attempt to “dismantle Hezbollah and restore security in northern Israel.
Since October 7, Netanyahu has blocked numerous ceasefire attempts despite apparent pressure from his main patron, the United States.
On July 31, Netanyahu even ordered his security forces to assassinate Hamas political leader – and main ceasefire negotiator – Ismael Haniyeh during his visit to Iran, where he attended the inauguration of President Massoud Pezeshkian.
Israeli political commentator Oren Ziv said Sinwar’s latest assassination emboldens Israel’s far right, which has continued to support Netanyahu’s calls for “total victory” in Gaza, behaving, he said, as “drug addicts”.
“Sinwar’s death is a dose for now, but it will satisfy neither the right-wing public opinion nor the government (in the long term). They want more massacres and more wars,” he told Tel Aviv Tribune.
No lessons learned
In March 2004, Israel assassinated Hamas founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a quadriplegic, by firing three missiles at him as he left a mosque near his home in Gaza after prayers.
Before his death, Ahmed Yassin called for a cold peace with Israel, which would be conditional on Israel withdrawing its troops from Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Israel’s response was to attempt to destroy Hamas by assassinating Ahmed Yassin and other Palestinian leaders.
This approach backfired when Hamas won a large majority in the last Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006, Buttu recalls.
“Hamas ended up becoming even stronger than it was (during Ahmed Yassin’s lifetime),” she told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“As time goes by… more and more people recognize that (Israel) may try to kill the leaders of the resistance, but it will never kill the resistance,” she added.
The Middle East Council’s Rahman echoes the idea that Hamas will continue to survive the current war, even if it is seriously degraded.
“Organizationally, (killing Sinwar) further degrades Hamas in terms of its leadership and operations. But the organization is intact… it has fighters who operate in cells without centralized leadership,” he told Tel Aviv Tribune.
Regardless of whether Hamas survives, Palestinian resistance will persist in one form or another, Rahman added.
Noting that the armed struggle is rooted in the suffering Palestinians have endured due to entrenched Israeli occupation, Buttu and Rahman said Israel’s total destruction of Gaza would only aggravate Palestinian grievances.
“The underlying grievances (of the Palestinians) are not addressed… so resistance to Israeli dispossession will continue,” Rahman told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“It’s that simple. It’s the simple equation.